ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how grooming at the micro level is part of a complex dynamic that extends beyond the coach-athlete relationship including such meso dynamics as the goals of the sport club, availability of coaching positions, available pedagogical models, and the role of management. They are also affected by dynamics at the macro level such as international rules, the attention paid to a sport in the public (national) imagination and media, financing of elite sport including rewards for top athletes, and media attention. Ideologies about gender, age, capitalism, and performance/winning, for example, support the ways in which institutions are shaped. Both macro and micro levels inform coach-athlete interactions. Similarly these interactions may reproduce both dominant ideologies and institutions. We draw on data from our study with 14 elite young women gymnasts, 12 parents, five high performance coaches, and five members of board directors of clubs that produce elite women gymnasts (Jacobs, Smits, & Knoppers, 2017; Smits, Jacobs, & Knoppers, 2017), to show how these three levels interact to create situations that may facilitate grooming processes. We pay special attention to the ways in which power plays out at all three levels and, at the same time, transcends them.
